Outside my window... All the pollen in the world! Ugh! My allergies have pretty much made me a prisoner.
I am thinking... Emotionally, this is typically the hardest week of the year for me. Annually during this week, my mind involuntarily walks through the final days of Dancing Angel's life, culminating in the anniversary of her death 72 hours after being diagnosed with a brain tumor that was later identified as Grade IV Glioblastoma Multiforme on January 15, 2003. The morning of her funeral saw the death of my favorite grandmother and closest confident, my maternal grandmother Mama Dear on January 20, 2003 from congestive heart failure. On January 22, 2011, I lost my mother from cholangiocarcinoma. The 22nd is also the birthday of my maid of honor who passed away in 2009. We had known each other since we were 3 years old.
While I dread going into this season, I relish coming out of it with a vengeance. Princess Butterfly has started reading Macbeth this semester. I remember studying it as a teenager, reading it aloud to my mother (it seems I have always loved reading aloud). We both took a liking to a quote in the play, "We have scorched the snake, not killed it." It is akin to:
While I dread going into this season, I relish coming out of it with a vengeance. Princess Butterfly has started reading Macbeth this semester. I remember studying it as a teenager, reading it aloud to my mother (it seems I have always loved reading aloud). We both took a liking to a quote in the play, "We have scorched the snake, not killed it." It is akin to:
“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.” ~ German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche
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| I think this chart has exemplified my own grief journey. |
Coming through this season reminds me of all that I have lost, yet all that I have gained. it reminds me that my Yah is faithful and in spite of every trial and tribulation I have endured and I'm still here to tell about it.
(Philippians 1:6 ISR98) - "being persuaded of this, that He who has begun a good work in you shall perfect it until the day of Yeshua Messiah."
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(2 Corinthians 12:9 ISR98) - "And He said to me, “My favour is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, then, I shall rather boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Messiah rests on me."
I am thankful... Friend Hubby made a connection to where he could possibly be speaking into the lives of some young black men. Praise Yah! That's been something on his heart to do for some time.
I am wearing... My housewife uniform, knit pants with a pocket so I can use the pedometer app on my phone, and a long-sleeved comfortable tee shirt.
I am creating...I will probably be doing a lot of knitting today since I have no work because of the holiday and my allergies have me glued to one spot.
I am reading... This was a good read: Relationships - Ties that bind. Yah definitely used it to set me free in some things. They were talking about marriage, but there were some things in there that can be applicable to other relationships as well. Pay close attention to the words "liberty" and "freedom." You may want to look them up in the AHLB as well.
I am listening to.... Two songs get have encouraged me this week. This is the first song:
This is the second song. Sanban actually played it in worship on Shabbat and I was so surprised because I hadn't talked to him about it at all the week prior:
I am watching... Since the chapter of Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House I am on is all about table setting, I decided to see if I could find a video on tablescapes. I found one that I LOVE!!!! It is elaborate, but she did say that she collected all of her items over time, everything on clearance (little by little). I can do that! She even mentioned many stores that are convenient for me to shop at: TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, and Tuesday Morning. I also loved her tea cart. I've been thinking about looking for one.
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| This was a picture of my table for Rosh Chodesh (New Moon or head of the month) last week. Kind of plain. I see now that as is done in fashion, layering is a technique that I need to practice. |
I am hoping... To get some good sleep tonight. My allergies had me wide awake when Friend Hubby left this morning.
I am looking forward to... My father's side of the family voted me to be the family historian because of all the research I have done on our family tree. We will have a family reunion this coming summer and I have been nervous about attending until now. Now I'm actually excited. Unknown to many of the younger generation of our family, the family tree consists of educated black men at a time when such men were considered a threat (in many places that is still an issue). Our family tree includes the first African American to practice dentistry in our home town, the first African American to run for a seat on the school board and get elected. Our family tree includes a husband and wife team who successfully ran an African American newspaper weathering the persecution and threats of whites in Mississippi. They fled Mississippi and became the founders of our home town's chapter of the NAACP. They were ministers, business owners, community activists, and civil rights leaders. On my father's paternal side, though my grandparents split up earlier than I can remember, my grandfather stayed married to his second wife around 40 years, he worked faithfully as a firefighter until he retired, having lived in the same house for all of my memory.
And then came the next generation.
I had a conversation with a friend a few years ago, comparing stories that we had both married young. One thing she pointed out to me was that while she was young, her husband had lived independent of his parents for 7 years before they were married. I identified with that fact. Friend Hubby had been in the Air Force for 8 years before we married. These men had already established their own rent histories, did their own income taxes, maintained car ownership, etc.
Unfortunately, the climate of the 1960s and 1970s was not the sort of society to produce the same caliber of men. Rather than having established themselves before marriage, they sought the company of women who had stable jobs with benefits, having lived independently of their natal families before they themselves had done so. All of these women (stepmothers and aunts) are among the nicest women I've ever known. The men obviously had good taste and knew what to look for in a wife. These were good looking men and smooth talkers. They told these women whatever they wanted to hear. They filled their hearts with dreams of the future that most women want. The women busied themselves cultivating those seeds of hope (as women are prone to do) only to one day look up and realize that the only person in the relationship actively working toward those goals was them. It was as if she had been given busy work just to keep her quiet. If she asked too many questions about when the man was going to contribute to the dream, he would shift the dream to something else so that all the work on the previous dream amounted to wasted time, or forget that he had spoken that dream and make the woman think she was crazy for bringing it up, or finally make so many excuses, explode in anger, and then make the woman feel guilty as if it was HER fault he couldn't contribute. Eventually, for the sake of their children, reality set in. The women realized that these men were not going to be stable partners, they weren't going to invest in their children, nor were they going to become a role model for their children to emulate. They were not going to see to the needs of the family any more than hand to mouth. The women eventually divorced them and the men became deadbeat dads for the most part.
As of today, all of these women that I am aware of are in stable, happy, mutually beneficial marriages to someone else and have been for over a decade and a half. The men, now somewhere in the neighborhood of their 60s, are all single, have pretty much no retirement or savings to speak of stored up, are still working where they can get it, but never more than 5 years in the same place (except for the pastor and the beautician). Finding another woman to play the same trick on is probably out of the question because any woman in their age dating bracket has already been there, done that.
There is one exception in that generation. One uncle went to prison as a young man. When he was released, he went to seminary and became the pastor of a large church that does a lot of work in the community. He has continued his education and now has a doctorate in Theology. He has been married to only one woman ever, raised and educated two daughters, and has a wonderful adult-child relationship with them and his grandchildren. The rest of us barely know our cousins because we were all raised by our mothers, these self same hardworking women, and had very little contact with this side of the family. Even siblings in our family have only really connected since we've been adults and we have sought that on our own, not through our fathers.
I am thankful for this opportunity and am praying that as the oldest in MY generation, that what I share with my younger cousins (that I just barely know) will point them back to the root of the tree of where our family sprung from and see especially the men of my generation who are all in their early 20s, do something different than the previous generation.
And then came the next generation.
I had a conversation with a friend a few years ago, comparing stories that we had both married young. One thing she pointed out to me was that while she was young, her husband had lived independent of his parents for 7 years before they were married. I identified with that fact. Friend Hubby had been in the Air Force for 8 years before we married. These men had already established their own rent histories, did their own income taxes, maintained car ownership, etc.
Unfortunately, the climate of the 1960s and 1970s was not the sort of society to produce the same caliber of men. Rather than having established themselves before marriage, they sought the company of women who had stable jobs with benefits, having lived independently of their natal families before they themselves had done so. All of these women (stepmothers and aunts) are among the nicest women I've ever known. The men obviously had good taste and knew what to look for in a wife. These were good looking men and smooth talkers. They told these women whatever they wanted to hear. They filled their hearts with dreams of the future that most women want. The women busied themselves cultivating those seeds of hope (as women are prone to do) only to one day look up and realize that the only person in the relationship actively working toward those goals was them. It was as if she had been given busy work just to keep her quiet. If she asked too many questions about when the man was going to contribute to the dream, he would shift the dream to something else so that all the work on the previous dream amounted to wasted time, or forget that he had spoken that dream and make the woman think she was crazy for bringing it up, or finally make so many excuses, explode in anger, and then make the woman feel guilty as if it was HER fault he couldn't contribute. Eventually, for the sake of their children, reality set in. The women realized that these men were not going to be stable partners, they weren't going to invest in their children, nor were they going to become a role model for their children to emulate. They were not going to see to the needs of the family any more than hand to mouth. The women eventually divorced them and the men became deadbeat dads for the most part.
As of today, all of these women that I am aware of are in stable, happy, mutually beneficial marriages to someone else and have been for over a decade and a half. The men, now somewhere in the neighborhood of their 60s, are all single, have pretty much no retirement or savings to speak of stored up, are still working where they can get it, but never more than 5 years in the same place (except for the pastor and the beautician). Finding another woman to play the same trick on is probably out of the question because any woman in their age dating bracket has already been there, done that.
There is one exception in that generation. One uncle went to prison as a young man. When he was released, he went to seminary and became the pastor of a large church that does a lot of work in the community. He has continued his education and now has a doctorate in Theology. He has been married to only one woman ever, raised and educated two daughters, and has a wonderful adult-child relationship with them and his grandchildren. The rest of us barely know our cousins because we were all raised by our mothers, these self same hardworking women, and had very little contact with this side of the family. Even siblings in our family have only really connected since we've been adults and we have sought that on our own, not through our fathers.
I am thankful for this opportunity and am praying that as the oldest in MY generation, that what I share with my younger cousins (that I just barely know) will point them back to the root of the tree of where our family sprung from and see especially the men of my generation who are all in their early 20s, do something different than the previous generation.
I am learning... Through the mystery that I am reading, I am learning a lot about the French Creole culture of New Orleans in the early 1800s. I have Creole roots on both sides of my family that I have never explored so this is all new to me. Friend Hubby and I were remarking on how The Grand Duchess so easily picked up German, the country of her birth and Sanban easily picked up Japanese, the country of his birth, but as a girl from the age of 7 when my aunt took French in high school, I have always had a love of the French language. I used to be quite good at it when I was in school. For my 16th birthday my mother took me to a French restaurant and let me order off the menu for her. It was the first time I remember eating lamb. For our 4th wedding anniversary, Friend Hubby took me to Paris, I lifelong dream fulfilled. Maybe I should take up speaking French again. I think I still have the DuoLIngo app on my tablet.
One of my favorite things... The Grand Duchess has made her third video on her YouTube channel Pretty Doesn't Bite.
From the learning rooms...
Senior: I finally sat down and did his official high school transcript. I used the template from Pros and Cons of Homeschooling, which I felt was much better than the transcript that I had used 6 years ago for The Grand Duchess. There are boxes for you to fill in and there is even a place where Friend Hubby can sign as the principal. After calculating his GPA, however, I am IMPRESSED. When all the college classes are calculated in, Sanban's got a 4.07 GPA on a 4.0 scale! He's a good student anyway, very self-motivated and hates to fail, but I think the college English and Japanese classes really took him over the top.
We are still moving on toward the Eagle!
We are still moving on toward the Eagle!
Sophomore: My baby girl Princess Butterfly starts her very first college class on Wednesday! *sniff, sniff*. We have already informed her classical co-op that she won't be returning next school year. She will be taking 2 college classes per semester in the fall.
Pondering these words...
Toward the end of War Room, Ms. Clara asks Yah to send her someone else that she can plant seeds of faith into. According to the Ancient Hebrew Lexicon, the Hebrew word "emunah" where we get the word faith or belief comes from a word family whose root means, "From the firmness of the plant that comes out from the seed. Something that grabs hold or supports something else. The passing of strength or skill to the next generation." I am ready for the next season and looking forward to the next set of open doors.
From the kitchen... Princess Butterfly and I got up on Sunday morning and did a lot of food prep for the week. She made French Toast and tried her hand at puff pastry for the first time. I felt that the red beans and rice that I had made for Shabbat was WAY to spicy so I decided to revamp them as a Three-Bean Soup. Sanban was NOT happy. He loves spicy food and had been looking forward to eating the leftover beans as they were. However, I got a thumbs up for the soup so I'm happy. I also made some corn muffins, but I only had about 2/3 cups of cornmeal when I needed 1 cup. One thing that Princess Butterfly and I are trying to do is to cook without shopping, using whatever we have on hand. As a substitute for that extra 1/3 cup I used organic grits, which happen to be the same color as the cornmeal. Princess Butterfly said that they tasted no different.
Princess Butterfly made a fabulous chicken thigh recipe for dinner and Friend Hubby was huffing and puffing because since we were only using what we had on hand, we only had enough for one serving each. He was trying to take Sanban's but he wasn't giving it up. LOL I will have to ask her what that recipe was.
The Grand Duchess bought a zucchini pasta shaped making thingy for her apartment and now is having fun trying out low-carb recipes. I'm going to have to get one too.
Princess Butterfly made a fabulous chicken thigh recipe for dinner and Friend Hubby was huffing and puffing because since we were only using what we had on hand, we only had enough for one serving each. He was trying to take Sanban's but he wasn't giving it up. LOL I will have to ask her what that recipe was.
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| This is my family's favorite quiche, Crustless Spinach Quiche. |
The Grand Duchess bought a zucchini pasta shaped making thingy for her apartment and now is having fun trying out low-carb recipes. I'm going to have to get one too.
Around the house... Since I have been looking at so many pictures of table centerpieces, the glass candle holders in my house caught my attention. I cleaned the old wax out of them by doing a makeshift double boiler, placing them inside a bowl that was inside a pot of simmering water. Once the wax melted, I wiped each out with a napkin and am saving the napkins for the next time I use the fire pit. I've also been looking at some landscaping ideas and am getting inspiration from a book I got from the library. I have a "little by little" mentality when it comes to big projects. I may just buy a couple of flagstones every time I get paid until I have the amount I want.
Honor where honor is due: http://thesimplewoman.blogspot.com/ *
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